Part 1 of the series: Shooting Down Theistic Evolution

According to Genesis 1:1, the universe was launched in an instant, due to the initiating, intelligent, omnipotent, creative work of Elohim. In the first verse of the Bible our beliefs are framed about God, the one God, the only eternal God, the God who is distinct from, yet involved with His creation. He created time, space, and substance out of nothing. And as quickly as the second verse in the Bible, amidst this new and vast universe, God focuses His work on the earth. Genesis 1:2 describes the earth’s early condition, setting the scene for a week’s worth of forming and filling so that man could live on His planet.

Not only was this the first week ever, it was the original W.O.W. Week (“week of wow” week). There was nothing except for God before “wow” week. In that week, all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

I emphasize the word week because it seems that a very small minority believe there was only one, 24-7 week in Genesis chapter one, and the majority I’m concerned about are not those who reject the Bible altogether. A person who doesn’t believe in God and who has no commitment to Scripture certainly won’t hitch their wagon to the creation account. Naturalistic evolution, that is, the development of life apart from God, presumably the result of a big bang, using the formula “nothing times no one equals everything,” is not the problem (besides the fact that it is clearly ruled out by Genesis 1:1). It seems most scientists don’t even cling to that theory any longer.

But I am concerned with those who desire to reconcile Scripture with science, specifically those who desperately want to squeeze the millions of years required by the evolutionary theory into the Genesis one story. The problem is with professing Christians, those who believe in God, those who claim allegiance to the Bible, who struggle to cram a version of evolution into creation.

Most who desire to reconcile science (granting for the sake of argument that evolution can even be considered “science”) with Scripture call themselves theistic evolutionists or progressive creationists, but both of those approaches make a similar scrambled mess of exegesis .1 Those persons want to keep both science and the Bible, so they look for ways to fit evolution into God’s design. They believe God worked through minute mutations and gradual development.

I don’t remember this being a popular position when I went to public high school. Back in the day, you were on one side or the other. You either believed God and the Bible and creation, or there was no god at all and the Bible was stupid and evolution was scientific fact.

Yet theistic evolution appears to be the common, Christian way of thinking today. By far, the majority of Genesis commentaries I’ve read presume theistic evolution to be the proper interpretation of the chapter. Even a loyal reader of the Void wants to “leave the door open” for God’s work through evolution, and suggested that theistic evolution gives God more glory.

So how do you answer that? What can you say to those who want God as the evolution mover? There are at least six bullets from Genesis chapter one alone that shoot down any notion of evolution, over six days or over millions of years, and prove it unbiblical. There are other biblical and scientific evidences available to the Christian apologist. But mathematical formulas about DNA strands or cracks in the fossil record are not as convenient or authoritative as a well-reading of the story itself. I want believers to be able to take anyone to Genesis one and show that God Himself says He didn’t create via evolution. Over the next six days I’ll post the biblical bullets.2

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  1. Two other attempts to stuff millions of years into Genesis one include the Revelation Theory and the Gap Theory. But theistic evolution seems to be the prevailing shot in the dark. ↩
  2. And so there's no confusion, by saying "six days," I'm referring to the next six, sequential, 24-hour days, as defined by the cycle of light and darkness. ↩

UPDATE [9:55AM October 23, 2008]:

I received a comment on the above post with language in it that is not suitable for approval. The gist was that I am a total waste of time because I questioned the science of evolution and, as they said, evolution “is the most important concept in biology” and “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

To be clear, I wasn’t sniping when I said:

granting for the sake of argument that evolution can even be considered “science”

I simply meant to point out, that according to the definition of science, evolution has never been observed nor has it been demonstrated or repeated through experiment, and therefore, evolution is more accurately outlined as a theory, not a fact.